Also surfacing in April will be the Birmingham, AL-based REIT'sfive-story, 155,000-sf office building. No leases have beenannounced to date. The site at County Road 46A and Interstate 4 is25 miles north of Downtown Orlando. The REIT's ambitiousconstruction plans for the rest of 2001 and 2002 are to completesome of the 450 planned apartment units and start on a portion ofthe 420 planned hotel rooms.

Colonial sees a niche in new office development despitethird-quarter vacancies of 12.4% in the Lake Mary/Heathrow/Sanfordsubmarket. There was 463,240 sf of new office under construction inthe third quarter, according to Grubb & Ellis Co. Netabsorption was 83,408 sf for the quarter and 323,180 sf for thenine-month period. The submarket has a total 3.37 million activesf.

The REIT's long-range plan is to house 1.1 million sf of officewithin Colonial Town Park. Crescent Resources Inc. of Raleigh, NCand Pizzuti Development Co. of Columbus, OH are major players onthis submarket's office development turf and will compete headonwith Colonial on some of the buildings. Class A asking averagerents are $19.78 per sf; class B, $15.81 per sf.